Two Photos

My grief graduated this spring

I put a silly hat on it & took its portrait
but it looked nothing like the way it felt
to carry time like a fortune teller
cast out of divination, the endless shuffling
of scenarios doesn’t reveal anything
but the primal need for answers

The day my girls find the little bird
they imagine cartoons, two beaming parents
just trying to teach their red-bellied son
how to go out into this world, like survival
never mattered so much, they clutch
each other's hand & grieve what they never
had to learn to release before, they do it
in songs, a celebration in tears, their begging
me to take its picture so they can remember

& it’s morbid, but I do it, because I know how
those nests have a way of returning
back to their emptiness, how their space
follows everywhere, how the air is a force
that pushes against their arms, how disappointing
the failure of wings can be

how they let go of flying